Working with Partners instead of Clients

Working with a partner for this project, namely Simon Bates, has been a much better experience than working for people, say on the Commission Project. Working for the band to create their music video was alright, but despite them asking us to do it, we had to do things how they wanted it, when they wanted it and whatever else they happened to want. We wanted narrative, they said no. We suggested locations, they said no. There was very little compromise with the commission as it is what they wanted us to make. The only time we could argue was when i refused to film them playing with no clothes on because i'd rather get a different commission.

Working with Simon, however, we got an equal say in what the video came out like. We made some suggestions, he said what he thought would work better and we talked about the pros and cons of each different idea. If we thought something would look better one way and he wanted it done another, we could talk about it and discuss reasons. It was good to have this sort of communication with the person we were working with, as it allowed us to ensure we stayed on track of what he wanted. We may not have been working for Simon, but ultimately, he wants the video, so there would be no point making something completely the opposite of what he wants.

With the Capture project, we were working with Five Leaves Publishing to create book trailers for their Crime Express book series. This project, however, we had no contact with the company. They didn't tell us what they wanted, they didn't tell us what they though and we got no feedback on the finished pieces. This was useless, because we all set about creating book trailers, having no idea if they would be any good or any use to the company and they just seemed totally uniterested. It was good, as it allowed us to use our creativity to create what we thought would be an appropriate trailer for a book on our own instead of relying on people telling us what they want, but i prefer having contact with thepeople i am working for/with.

Final Video

Promotional Trailer Final - Matt, Tara & Tim from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

This is the final version of our fiver promo. I liked our rough cut, but after the feedback i much prefer this one. I think it holds together much better as a video, and generally makes more sense. We also cut it a bit more so it is slightly shorter and i think that makes it easier to maintain viewer concentration throughout the whole thing, as it got a bit boring after 2 minutes anyway.

I think moving the interviews to further towards the end was a good idea, and i think putting a bit of extra text in was a smart move too. While simply having text saying "Get £2 for each ticket you sell" may make sense to us, we have it in context and know roughly how the fiver works. If you saw this either online or at the event, you probably wouldn't realise that you were given x amount of tickets to sell to make some money. I think putting that in as text was a good idea as it just makes it that but clearer to potential applicants.

I also think putting in that you need 'minor gig experience' was good because it doesn't say that if you've never really played to a large crowd you can't apply, but it also stops people who have never played in front of any people before applying and wasting time.

I think using much more live footage, cut quicker and using the lights and colours as much as physical movement to build up tension was a really good idea. Cutting the interviews was a good move because they really slowed down the video and many of them didn't really add anything to it. Removing the 'cut-to-blacks' at the beginning made the video better because it looked alright but if there's nothing happening for even a split second it slows down the pace of the video.

I think the video is much stronger after considering the feedback and changing it. I really liked it before, but it is a better made video now. I think getting the feedeback from the UNiversity students was a great idea because it showed us a different way of looking at things. It was good for some people to be told it was shit and they should do something else, but it was also great for our group to be told it wasn't terrible, especially for the time we made it in. This made me feel good, because someone who has been working on things similar to us but at a much higher level seemed almost impressed with our work, which is great, but he also didn't hesitate to say 'whoever put that in, remove it. It sucks', which i think was good as Pete and Nick are a lot more careful with what they say to us.

The Junction Young Ambassadors

Another group of people that have been working with the Junction are the Junction Young Ambassadors.

The Junction Young Ambassadors are a group of people from Cambridge who help the Junction to make the venue a more youth-friendly environment. They have been running since March 2009 and worked with Architecture graduates to design a new front Foyer for the Junction building. They also ran a ‘Youth Summit’ which invited teenagers to the Junction to participate ideas to the ‘Summer Intensive programme’. Their most recent project with the Junction is to hold a ‘Takeover’ event on the 8th May 2010 for the youth of Cambridge. Their research consisted of Facebook and talking to friends, and they managed to establish a basic layout for the day. This day would include several workshops in various areas of the Junction building including, sound and lighting, djing, spoken word, dance, beatboxxing, digital imagery and more. The evening will stage the most exciting aspect to our event, and what the youth of Cambridge have requested, a headlining dubstep DJ to do their thing and… Well, DJ..

Simon's feedback

Simon came in and gave us some feedback about our finished videos. My group got the most positive result out of the whole class. We scored overall marks of 34/40 which was the highest marks overall, and this shows that we worked well as a team. Win. He liked that i had stuck as close as possible to the brief and used it as the basis of our product. Our video showed both the financial and personal benefits of performing at the Fiver, in a hope that it would continue to attract an audience and encourage people to play it instead of having the same bands going on over and over again.

What i have learnt

Through the course of this project i have learnt many different things and skills. Some of these will come in useful for the future, many probably won't. For example when we went to Bournemouth, the Student talking to us was using these crazy shortcuts on Final Cut that we'd never found, so when we got back we sat there pressing buttons until we found them. This will come in useful as is makes editing slightly easier as i now know how to watch through footage easier instead of having to scroll through it al i can press a button and rewind to the bit i was looking for.

I learnt the different job roles available at the Junction. These go from technicians to ticket selling people to generally organising. This probably won't be greatly useful in the future, but i assume most places will have similar set-ups if i find myself looking for a job somewhere like it.